Blink

Intuition is not some magical property that arises unbidden from the depths of our mind. It is a product of long hours and intelligent design, of meaningful work environments, and particular rules and principles. This audiobook shows us how we can hone our instinctive ability to know in an instant, helping us to bring out the best in our thinking and become better decision-makers in our homes, offices, and in everyday life.

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Publisher's Summary

Intuition is not some magical property that arises unbidden from the depths of our mind. It is a product of long hours and intelligent design, of meaningful work environments, and particular rules and principles. This audiobook shows us how we can hone our instinctive ability to know in an instant, helping us to bring out the best in our thinking and become better decision-makers in our homes, offices, and in everyday life. Just as he did with his revolutionary theory of the tipping point, Gladwell reveals how the power of blink could fundamentally transform our relationships - the way we consume, create and communicate, how we run our businesses, and even our societies. You'll never think about thinking in the same way again.

This is the third Malcolm Gladwell book I have listened to (or read), and like the other two, it is really interesting, but just a little bit unconvincing in parts. He is a brilliant storyteller, drawing you in with interesting anecdotes about a man who can pick winning horses by observing their body language and a rogue soldier who outwits the entire US army in a war game scenario. But towards the end of the book his argument loses its way.

As the book progresses he gradually builds a convincing theory about how our minds are adept at making accurate instantaneous judgements and how, in many cases, the more information we are given the less likely we are to judge well.

But then he starts to make some slightly dubious claims and even to contradict himself somewhat. He tells the story of 4 policemen who kill an African American in a bad neighbourhood at night because they think he has a gun. He says that the stress of the situation gives them ‘temporary autism’ which robs them of their normal powers to make ‘blink’ judgements. But you just don’t need this theory to explain why they misjudged the situation. It was dark, and the inability of the men to detect the innocence and terror on the victim’s face could be explained by this alone.

Later on he describes another policeman, who had received training in controlling this kind of panic reaction in dangerous and stressful situations, and because of this training, when faced with an armed youngster, he waited a little longer and gathered more information and decided not to shoot. But this contradicts the main idea of the book, which is that we make better decisions when we allow our intuition to do it in a blink.

So, by the end of the book, you have been entertained and have also been persuaded that humans often make better judgements when they ‘thin slice’, i.e. they make quick unconscious decisions based on very limited information. But, in my opinion, he tries to over-elaborate his theory in the later chapters, and I felt myself disagreeing with him, which spoilt the book a bit.

If you happened to like any of Malcolm Gladwell's books, you will surely like this one. For me , it is even better than the previous ones. I think negative reviews might have been influenced by exceedingly high expectations.

Excellent and inspiring book - of the matter of intuition as well as actual issues concerning us all - such as police shootings or effective markting of products.
A minor but unusual and very nice detail: this audiobook is actually modified slightly from the written edition, so it consistently makes sense to a listener as oposed to a reader.

Would you consider the audio edition of Blink to be better than the print version?

Yes, the fact that it is author read gives it a feel of authenticity. I don't have to judge emphasis or pronunciation (not a native English speaker)

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

The book confronts one with everyday realities which is presented from a new perspective.

Which character – as performed by Malcolm Gladwell – was your favorite?

He does himself rather convincingly :-)

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

It held my attention, but not to the point where I could not pause. I liked it - binding enough to hold me yet autonomous enough in its coherence that the interruptions inevitable in my life did not significantly detract from the value even though I can only listen for ~40 minutes at a time

Any additional comments?

Outliers spoiled it for us as this is somewhat less wow but by any other standard it is great. Sometimes I got the feeling the point was belabored as it was already stated yet only paraphrased later, but there were also times when the extra angle added more insight.All n all a valuable listen!

I enjoyed listening to this. Gladwell interweaves gripping stories with interesting psychological information very effectively. Like another reviewer, however, I was a bit surprised with the direction this took. It started out being about the powers of the unconscious and how experts can make very complicated judgements almost instantaneously. It seemed to promise to tell the reader how to harness the power of the unconsious. But then it swerved much more into exploring how snap judgements can be bad, and ended up being about the nature of prejudice. This was very interesting (possibly more interesting than the direction it had been heading in), but definitely a bit unexpected.

14 of 16 people found this review helpful

Ewan

Kidderminster, United Kingdom

2/16/07

Overall

"Not quite what I expected"

Enjoyed lisening to the various stories but kept hearing myself say - and your point is?

6 of 7 people found this review helpful

judith

canary wharf, United Kingdom

7/18/11

Overall

"Gadfly-Gladwell"

Mr Gladwell has collected an interesting set of anecdotes loosely connected to short time spans and pulls them together without much logic or structure and with many internal contradictions. Sometimes experts are people who have analysed their topic (e.g. food) so that they have access to their sub-conscious whereas non-experts flounder around with holistic impressions, sometimes experts have such finely tuned intuitions that they can instantly say that, for example, a statue is fake, but they have no access to the (highly trained) sub-conscious that tells them this. Ignore pedants like me, Mr Gladwell's amiable muddle-through will provide entertainment and food for thought (especially about prejudice) for any reader.

4 of 5 people found this review helpful

Lewis

Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

6/5/08

Overall

"Brilliant!"

I love this kind of book. If you are even mildly interested in why people do what they do, this book is another must (as well as Predictably Irrational*). It's all in plain English, and it's all fascinating.

I would recommend this book. In fact, I have to many friends.

Get it!

4 of 5 people found this review helpful

L

LITTLEHAMPTON, United Kingdom

12/12/12

Overall

"Very Average..."

Blink is a very successful book which covers the subject of intuition. I expected great things from this and the audiobook got off to a flying start with Gladwell's playful and confident reading style. I kept expecting the audiobook to then ramp up past what was fast becoming a very long-winded introduction...except it wasn't and by now I was onto the third chapter. Whilst providing some interesting examples, this book does little else than state the obvious...again and again and again....it feels like a lot of newspaper clippings all pulled together (which some say is exactly what it is). For such a successful book I had such high expectations and for the most part this book failed to deliver...I found myself becoming increasingly bored.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Anthony

london, United Kingdom

7/14/11

Overall

"Awful"

Opportunist crap. This guy doesn't have any theory, ideas, nothing. He just wanted to make money with this.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

Helen

LondonUnited Kingdom

7/27/09

Overall

"Brain shift"

This book really makes you rethink how you think.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Simon Pegg

12/4/06

Overall

"Fascinating and Compelling"

Excellent. I am sure I will listen to this again and again.

4 of 7 people found this review helpful

Phil

Paisley, United Kingdom

10/30/14

Overall

Performance

Story

"Facinating subject"

If you could sum up Blink in three words, what would they be?

Insightful, facinating and through provoking

Who was your favorite character and why?

I particularly enjoyed the link to the Rip, the army Marine and his use of the congnative processes in battle

Which scene did you most enjoy?

NA

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It kept me rivited, very interesting

Any additional comments?

I recommend this book to anyone, I wasn't particularly interested in the subject matter and took a punt on this book and have not regretted it.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Alexander

Great Dunham, United Kingdom

9/3/14

Overall

Performance

Story

"not really sure this went where it was going..."

Would you try another book written by Malcolm Gladwell or narrated by Malcolm Gladwell?

Malcolm books are all way interesting and follow a journey and story of how he got there, but more so than other I think this lost its way a little, may be on a second listen I will get more from it.

Would you be willing to try another book from Malcolm Gladwell? Why or why not?

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